Cyanogen, makers of popular software based on Android that extends the abilities of smartphones, is making a bid for the mainstream. The four-year-old company, which began as a one-person side project, said today that it has raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The goal is to vault past Blackberry and Windows Phone to become the third-most popular mobile operating system, after traditional Android and iOS. And the company is already closer than you might think.

The announcement blog post has more details and background. This is either the best idea they've ever had, or the beginning of the end. I honestly have no idea which of the two it will be. I like the fact that they might be more popular than Windows Phone though - puts everything into perspective, doesn't it?

The thing is that people like Nelson and I, we work with Microsoft Stuff on a daily basis. It is our bread and butter.

There are a lot of shitty things I don't like that Microsoft does. But I rarely had things which are total time wasters with regards to ASP.NET stack.

So you guys constantly bash Microsoft for things that I find trivial. Some things are shitty, but they are bashed for everything.

e.g. Microsoft responds to user back-lash by doing a 180 on policy ... people on here and on the internet in general were actually having a go about Microsoft for listening to the response they got after they presented their ideas and actually spending a lot of time, money and resources actually implementing the changes that people wanted.

I also get called a Microsoft Zealot when I actively support projects like OpenBSD by actually supporting their releases by buying their CDs even though I could wait a few weeks or follow current on my server which runs it.

Also a lot of it stops any sensible discussion and tbh it shows a lack of maturity when discussing a technical subject.